


Waiting For You

by Brumeier



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e10-e11 The Storm/The Eye, Episode: s01e12 The Defiant One, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Rodney was sure he'd never find his soulmate, not after what happened with Kolya. But then, things never go quite as planned in the Pegasus galaxy.





	

_I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you._ (Paulo Coelho)

Rodney couldn’t stop looking at his arm, even though it was covered now by gauze and medical tape. It didn’t matter. He knew what it looked like underneath. Carson had put ten stitches in him to close the gap made by Kolya’s knife.

His soulmark had been obliterated.

He was too numb to feel anything, thanks in part to the sedatives and painkillers Carson had given him, along with an admonition to get some rest. Rodney had done his best to comply, but once he got back to his room all he could do was sit on his bed and look at his arm and think of everything he’d lost.

A knock sounded on his door, Sheppard’s distinctive _rap…rap-RAP-rap_. Rodney pulled his shirt sleeve down to hide the bandage before he thought the door open. 

“You look like hell,” Rodney said as soon as Sheppard stepped into his room. 

He wasn’t being facetious. The Major was pale, the skin under his eyes looking faintly bruised. Rodney wasn’t surprised. After all, Sheppard almost single-handedly repelled a Genii invasion.

“Thanks a lot.” Sheppard dropped down on the desk chair and rubbed his hands over his face. “How are you doing? And don’t bullshit me, I know you went to see Carson.”

Rodney tried to drum up a proper scowl but he just couldn’t do it. “I’m fine. Just needed a few stitches.”

“Let me see.”

Rodney shook his head and cradled his arm protectively against his chest. “There’s nothing to see. Carson took care of it, so it’s not like I’m in danger of getting gangrene. You staring at it won’t make it heal any quicker.”

It was woefully ironic. He’d been so careful to keep his mark covered, waiting for that day he met _the one_ , the person with whom he shared a soulbond. He’d know right away, of course, and there would be a mutual unveiling of marks and his life would get infinitely better.

Now, even if he found his soulmate, he had no way to prove it. Just a close-up photo and a notation in his medical file, which was hardly definitive proof.

Sheppard gave in unexpectedly quickly, leaning back in the chair and yawning so hard his jaw cracked. 

“You should get some sleep,” Rodney said. “Did Carson look you over?”

Sheppard waved away his concern. “I’m fine.”

No, he wasn’t. Rodney knew the Major had to be feeling the weight of all those Genii deaths, the ones that happened when he closed the iris. It didn’t matter that they were coming to kill him, and Rodney and Elizabeth. If Rodney had learned anything about John Sheppard, it was that he put too little value on his own life and too much on the lives of others.

“You’re not fine. I’m not your Marines, you don’t have to put on a show of macho fortitude for me.”

“Neither do you,” Sheppard shot back.

“Elizabeth is making me see Heightmeyer.” Rodney finally worked up that scowl. He didn’t want to talk about what happened, not with the base shrink or anyone else. No-one needed to know how he’d begged Kolya not to cut him there. Anywhere else but there. But so far there’d been no evidence that soulmates existed in the Pegasus galaxy, and Kolya likely wouldn’t have cared in any case.

Sheppard snorted. “Me, too.”

He gave Rodney a long look before he got up and headed for the door. “McKay. If you…I’m right down the hall.”

Rodney swallowed around the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat. “I could really use a beer.”

Sheppard got a longing look on his face. “Yeah.” 

He lingered a moment longer before the door swished open and he was gone.

*o*o*o*

Rodney figured he should be able to put the whole Kolya thing behind him. It wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty of distractions, what with storm repairs and the regular bout of dysfunctional systems that he needed to tend to.

But Sheppard was walking around with a haunted look in his eyes, and Rodney had broken down within the first twenty minutes of his session with Heightmeyer, and he couldn’t stop looking at everyone in the science department and wondering why none of them seemed to be his soulmate.

His soulmark had appeared two months after his second birthday, and it had informed every choice he’d made once he understood what it meant. The soulmark had pushed him towards science, and the stars. He’d made life-changing discoveries, and worked alongside some of the top minds in his field, but never clicked with anyone enough to make him reveal his mark.

For a brief period of time he’d thought maybe Sam Carter, who was beautiful and brilliant, but then he’d heard through the grapevine that she didn’t have a soulmark. Forty percent of the population didn’t, and sometimes Rodney thought they were the lucky ones.

The chance that his soulmate was also in Atlantis was slim. The expedition was small, and the only person in his department he really got on with was Radek, whose soulmark curved delicately around the shell of his ear and wasn’t a match for the one that had been on Rodney’s arm.

It was all making Rodney more snappish than usual, enough so that Elizabeth had talked to him about it. Getting dressed down by her was a lot like getting scolded by his mother. So he jumped at the chance to survey the Lagrange satellite and get away from the city for a while.

Of course it all went sideways, which seemed to be the only direction _anything_ went in Pegasus. They found a downed Hive ship, and a single surviving Wraith, and of course Sheppard had to try to assuage his guilt over the dead Genii by single-handedly taking on a creature that had survived a barren wasteland for ten thousand years.

“You wanna get out there and help him, don’t you?” Gall asked, his voice as paper thin as his skin.

Rodney had a hard time looking at him, so withered and wasted. As much as Rodney protested to the contrary, he knew that Gall wasn’t coming back to Atlantis with them any other way but dead.

“You’re not the Rodney McKay you were,” Gall said. “People have noticed.”

“Don’t,” Rodney said sharply. “Don’t do that. I’m exactly the same. I’m not a hero.”

“He needs you.”

“So do you.” 

Gall was right, though, damn him. Sheppard was out there fighting alone against an unstoppable monster. What if the Wraith drained him dry, too? The thought was horrifying, and painful in a way it shouldn’t have been.

What chance did Rodney have on his own?

“Give me my gun,” Gall rasped. He held out one claw-like hand. “And go.”

Rodney was torn, but in the end there really wasn’t any other option. Sheppard needed him, and he needed to be there for Sheppard.

“I’ll go. But we’ll be back for you.” 

He put the gun in Gall’s hand, and a part of him knew. Knew what it meant, and why the shell of the man in front of him wanted it.

“He was my soulmate, you know,” Gall said, so softly Rodney almost missed it.

“What?”

“Gregory.”

Rodney felt suddenly nauseous. Gregory Abrams, whose body lay deeper inside the Hive ship. “I didn’t…I’m so…”

“Go,” Gall said. “Save the Major.”

“I’m sorry,” Rodney choked out, and then he was running. He couldn’t run fast enough to escape the sound of the gun going off.

*o*o*o*

Rodney was going to have sessions with Heightmeyer until the end of time. After the clusterfuck of the mission, and the loss of two good men, he retreated to his lab and locked everyone else out. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, see anyone, hear one more time that it wasn’t his fault Gall and Abrams were dead.

When he’d signed on for the Atlantis expedition it had been in the spirit of discovery. He hadn’t expected to be surrounded by so much death and violence.

_Rap…rap-RAP-rap._

“Go away, Major!” Rodney shouted through the door.

Of course it was never that simple with Major Super Gene. The door opened for him as if Rodney hadn’t personally sealed it against all intruders. Traitor city.

“I’m not in the mood,” Rodney said. He turned back to his laptop and away from the sympathetic expression on Sheppard’s face.

“McKay, it wasn’t –”

“If you say it wasn’t my fault, I swear to the God I don’t believe in that I will punch you in your stupid face.”

“No need to get personal.” 

Sheppard boosted himself up on the table and let his legs dangle. “How’s your arm?”

“Still attached.”

“Can I see it? Please?”

Rodney bit back the denial on his lips. He didn’t know why Sheppard wanted to see it so badly. What would it prove? Was he trying to punish himself for things that weren’t his fault? But he’d said _please_. And there was a tone in his voice, something inexplicably sad, that made it hard for Rodney to refuse. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide. Not anymore.

Wordlessly, Rodney pushed up his sleeve and held his arm out. Carson had removed the stitches, but the scar was still really red and a little swollen. On one edge of it a hint of black could be seen, all the remained of his mark.

Sheppard held Rodney’s wrist, his thumb moving just slightly over the pulse point there. He lightly traced the scar with his other hand.

“Matter tells space and time to curve. Space and time tell matter to move.”

Rodney’s skin flashed hot. “What did you say?”

“I learned it when I was five,” Sheppard said, never taking his eyes off the scar. “But it was a long time before I understood it. Math and physics, defining the universe. Did you know I went to school for math? Combinatorics.”

“I…what?” Rodney was having a hard time understanding the words coming out of Sheppard’s mouth. He was certain he was hearing them wrong. He had to be.

“I’m floundering out here,” Sheppard admitted in a hushed voice. He finally looked up at Rodney with that same haunted gaze he’d had since the Genii incursion. “I didn’t plan on any of this. I thought I could handle it on my own. But I can’t.” 

His fingers tightened around Rodney’s wrist.

“How do you know?” Rodney managed to ask. He felt a little like he might be having a heart attack. “How do you know what it said?”

Had he somehow hacked into Rodney’s medical file, despite the crazy levels of encryption Rodney himself had put on it?

“I knew the second I sat in the Chair in Antarctica,” Sheppard said.

He let go of Rodney, who immediately and embarrassingly missed the warmth of the man’s touch. And then the Major was pulling off the form-fitting black silicone band he wore around his wrist.

Rodney’s breath caught in his throat. 

It was an exact copy of his soulmark, Einstein’s elegant equation of general relativity. It followed the curve of Sheppard’s palm. Rodney reached out and traced it with one trembling finger.

“It’s you?”

Sheppard nodded, and his expression was as open as Rodney had ever seen it. Vulnerability and desire in equal measure. “It’s me.”

Rodney had been looking for his soulmate amongst the scientists. He never thought a flyboy with crazy cowlicks and a hero complex could be _the one_. “Did you say Combinatorics?”

Sheppard laughed, but it had a broken edge to it. Rodney was on his feet in an instant, his arms wrapped around Sheppard. His soulmate. Sheppard hugged him back just as tightly.

“We’re not alone,” Rodney heard himself saying. “We’re not alone, and it’s going to be okay.”

Sheppard tucked his head against Rodney’s neck. “It’ll be okay,” he agreed.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Fills the knife wounds/lacerations square on my h/c bingo card. And gets me my very first bingo!


End file.
